Meaningful Use

Vangent has been awarded a $3.3 million contract with the Indian Health Service (IHS) to support meaningful use interoperability deployment. Its Health Information Exchange Open Source (HIEOS) technology will help IHS meet requirements for EHR certification.

Quality Partners of Rhode Island, whose focus is on healthcare quality improvement, has been selected to serve on the Health Information Technology Competency Taskforce, funded through the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

Hospitals across the country are on track to meet 2011 meaningful use criteria set by the federal government, according to new data from HIMSS Analytics. Nearly a quarter of the participating hospitals reported they could achieve 10 or more of the 14 required meaningful use core requirements today.

With the goal of bringing data, documents and guidelines on meeting and exceeding meaningful use into one location, HIMSS has made available a new CPOE Wiki.

HIMSS, the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) and the Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Management Education (CAHME) have announced a collaboration to develop a model curriculum in healthcare IT, which will be designed for undergrad and grad students in healthcare management programs.

Merge Healthcare announced Tuesday strong financial results for the third quarter of 2010. Revenue for the company grew to $45.2 million in Q3, compared to $16.9 million in the same period last year.

The healthcare industry is spending an estimated $6 billion annually on data breaches of patient information, according to the latest benchmark study by Ponemon Institute. Protecting patient data is a low priority, the study concludes.

Epocrates, Inc., announced Thursday a partnership with Covisint, a Compuware Company, that aims at helping doctors get paid for quality reporting.

One of the largest recent security breaches of personal health information (PHI), involving 280,000 individuals, is on the surface a "pretty low-risk scenario," says one privacy expert. But, he acknowledges, "these things are like an onion: the more layers you peel back, the stinkier it gets."

In testimony Sept. 30 before a congressional committee, Joyce Sensmeier, vice president, informatics for HIMSS, called for more streamlined and timely health information technology standards - and warned that without them the government risks creating marketplace confusion.